Nikon put a lot of effort to design lenses that offer the best balance of image quality and portability, and apparently it paid off. Let’s look closely at how these lenses perform compared to their direct competitors.

Nikon 1 NIKKOR VR 10-30mm f/3.5-5.6 (equivalent to 27-81mm; this lens is part of the Nikon 1 kit):

Resolution: With a score of 39lp/mm, sharpness is just average. Resolution is optimal at 10mm f/4.

Distortion: Visible at 10mm (similar to the Nikon 1 NIKKOR 10mm f/2.8), and weak for other focal lengths.

Transmission: No noticeable flaws.

Vignetting: Reasonable for this kind of short focal length, with a maximum loss of up to –0.6 EV. There is no loss starting at f/5.6 for 10mm, 14mm, and 24mm focal lengths. To overcome the phenomenon at 30mm, one must shoot starting at f/8.

Chromatic aberrations: Very good, diminishing as the focal length increases.

Nikon 1 NIKKOR VR 30-110mm f/3.8-5.6(equivalent to 81-297mm):

Resolution: With a score of 39lp/mm, sharpness is just average. Resolution is optimal at f/5.6, but only in the image center.

Distortion: Visible but weak.

Transmission: No noticeable flaws.

Vignetting: Globally “very correct,” with a maximum loss of up to –0.9 EV, and negligible or nonexistent for all focal lengths starting at f/5.6. It is worth noting that there is no vignetting until 2/3.

Chromatic aberrations: Very good, no noticeable problems.

Globally, these zoom lenses and the fixed-length lens are of average optical quality. This said, they do have some attractive features:

The Nikon 1 10-30mm and the Nikon 1 30-110mm are also quite light (115g and 180g, respectively). The two lenses together cover a wide range (the equivalent of 27–297mm), making them useful in most situations that amateur photographers will encounter.

The most unusual (and best!) thing about this zoom lens is that there isn’t a manual focusing ring. Instead, it uses a “T-W” drive on the lens itself to change focal lengths, which helps the user zoom in and out smoothly. In addition, the rate of zoom change is more or less proportionate to the amount of pressure on the drive — very fun for shooting video.

Here are the performance results and technical characteristics of this video lens (tested on the Nikon 1 V1):

DxOMark Score: A weak 6, understandable in light of the low-light performance of the Nikon 1 J1 and V1 sensors. This DxOMark score, particularly its low-light component, demonstrates once again the limits of the Nikon 1 cameras.

Resolution: At 40 lp/mm, this lens has good sharpness for this type of equipment, with higher resolution at 30mm than at other focal lengths. The 10mm focal length becomes interesting at f/4.5-5.6.

Distortion: Visible at all focal lengths, it is at its weakest at 30 mm.

Vignetting: Darkening is especially present in the last third of the field, where one can lose up to -0.9EV. This said, one good point is that there is no measurable loss of light on 2/3rds of the field.

Chromatic aberrations: Important in the corners at 10mm and 100mm; once again, 30mm seems to be the optimal focal length.

Nothing surprising about the results for particular lens and lens type, which shows reasonable quality at 10mm and 30mm. However, at 530g, this is a fairly heavy lens. We expected something lighter, particularly for a camera that one might want to carry in one’s pocket.

Comparisons

Let’s compare how these new Nikon lenses perform on Nikon 1 cameras against the performance of similar lenses on other cameras.

Our goal, by the way, is not at all to denigrate the Nikon 1 cameras in comparing their lens quality results to those of the Nikon D3X and other cameras, since this would be entirely unfair (given that the different kinds of cameras are not comparable). Rather, we are using these measurements to show the relative strengths and weaknesses of these new lenses.

Resolution: 41 lp/mm for the 10mm and 52 lp/mm for the 35mm — only 11 lp/mm difference, which is not very big when one considers the enormous difference in quality between the two Nikon sensors. Thus the resolution of the 10mm is quite excellent.

Chromatic aberrations: 15µm for the 10mm and 14µm for the 35mm, meaning that both lenses are similar in this regard.

Resolution: At 38lp/mm, the results for 30-110mm closely follow those for the two Nikon super-zooms (45lp/mm for the 70-200mm and 42lp/mm for the 70-300mm), thus excellent by comparison.

Chromatic aberrations: Better corrected on the 30-110mm (6µm) than on the 70-300mm (16µm), and equivalent to the 70-200mm (5µm).

Conclusion

Relatively speaking, the Nikon 1 lenses are of very good quality if one takes into account the differences in size and performance of the tested sensors:

The Nikon 1 10mm is an excellent substitute for a 27mm lens.

The Nikon 110-30mm is comparable to the lenses found in Nikon and Olympus kits.

The Nikon 130-110mm holds up well against Nikkor 70-200 and 70-300 lenses.

In the course of testing, we perceived that the quality of the JPEGs that the cameras produced was far less than excellent. This is a shame, considering the potential for the same kind of excellence as seen with RAW images.

Further readings for the The Nikon 1 lenses test and review

To provide photographers with a broader perspective about mobiles, lenses and cameras, here are links to articles, reviews, and analyses of photographic equipment produced by DxOMark, renown websites, magazines or blogs.

It’s rare in the world of photography for a manufacturer to come up with an entirely new product line from scratch, and it’s equally rare for a famous manufacturer such as Nikon (the world market leader) to offer a new lens mount (Nikon CX). This makes the launch of the Nikon 1 line (Nikon J1 and Nikon V1) a major event in photography this fall.

Comments

Test series 1 lenses vs FX & DX Nikkor lenses with the FT-1 adapter

We have seen the test results of both types of lenses FX/DX and the Series 1 lenses on their respective sensors or cameras, but in my opinion it would be great if we could get a comparison test for both the DX/FX lenses installed on the Nikon V1/V2 by means of Nikons FT-1 adapter and se how they compare with the native series 1 lenses. Taking into consideration the fact that due to the huge 2.7 crop factor the CX sensor of the series 1 cameras have, it would be very interesting to see how well the 30-110 VR does for example with the 15-105 VR of the DX series with the mentioned FT-1 adapter on the same CX sensor. In theory since on the DX/FT-1 set we only use the center of the lens image, we could find that the aberrations, vignetting and other radial aware defects found on such a lens are left out of the equation, giving as a result a better overall quality picture. For that matter how about the result of a 300 f/1.4 VR2 image as seen in the V1 CX sensor compared to the cropped-to-size portion on a D4 sensor? I bet in both cases we would find interesting results due to the very different behaviour of the CX and FX sensors and the fact that on the CX sensor be are only using the better part of the image produced by such a terrific lens.

First replies for this comment

I also would like to see this. I use the 18-105, 50/1.8 (AF-S) and 55-300 via the adapter, and it certainly seems to me that there's advantages all round - no vignetting at all, barely any chromatic aberration, and an arguable increase in sharpness. This seems to match the comparison results (when you scale the DX sensor results to take account for the cropped size), but I'd still like to see an honest head-to-head test.